Find Long Sentences with a Vector of Vectors

It can be useful for a writer to make sure they are using variety of sentence lengths, or to ensure none of their sentences are too long. Let's build a tool that evaluates a text file for sentence length.

Choosing the appropriate container is key when using the STL. If we need something ordered, it's often best to use an associative container, such as map or multimap. In this case, however, since we need a custom sortCustom sort refers to the process of sorting a collection of elements according to a specific order or criterion defined by the user., it's easier to sort a vector.

The vector is generally the most flexible of the STL containers. Whenever another container type seems appropriate, but is missing one important capability, the vector is often an effective solution. In this case, where we need a custom sort, the vector works great.

This recipe uses a vector of vectors. The inner vector stores the words of a sentence, and the outer vector stores the inner vectors. As we'll see, this affords a lot of flexibility while retaining all the relevant data.

How to do it

This program needs to read in words, find the ends of sentences, store and sort the sentences, then print out the results.

• We'll start by writing a little function to tell us when we've hit the end of a sentence: